Essay
Mravlja
Not translated into English
Fran Erjavec · 1857
Synopsis
The spring sun wakes an anthill. The workers come out, repair the galleries, raise the collapsed pillars and carry the eggs towards the warmth. They keep aphids, which they tend as a farmer tends his cattle, for their sugary secretion, but the two big oaks that fed them have been felled. The larvae hatch and are fed ceaselessly. Then a colony of black ants attacks its red neighbours, plunders their pupae and reduces the survivors to slavery.
Context
This was his first printed scientific publication, which appeared, according to the national biography, in the 1858 Slovenski koledar calendar. The text opens a series of animal narratives, with La Grenouille, published in 1863, and L'Écrevisse, in 1881, later collected under a single title. The national biography notes that this way of telling science was already his before Brehm's great books, which began to appear in 1860, and that it owed nothing to Darwinism.
Who it is for
A few pages, between naturalist observation and story, accessible to young readers; there is no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Noticed from its publication, according to the Slovenska biografija, it has remained on the Slovenian school reading lists.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.